When a food client of mine was creating a new website, they asked me to look at their wireframes and preliminary concepts. I told them I could sum up what I thought in one word.
BORING!
Why was it boring? It was formulaic and blended into dozens of other sites in the same category. It didn’t stand out. In fact, it lacked disruption. Their competitors could have put their logo on the site and no one would have noticed.
Disruptive Marketing
The root of disrupt is a Latin word to break – rumpere. Is your marketing breaking rules, bucking trends and stand out in a crowd?
- Most cereal comes as a bag in a box – who sells cereal in a wine bottle or a milk carton?
- Most herbs are sold fresh or dried, but who sells herbs frozen in ice cubes?
- Most supermarket chains offer salad bars but what chain sells a Chinese food bar to bring customers into the store instead of ordering Chinese food for delivery?
- Most paint cans are the same but who makes one that has a built-in spout to make pouring easier and drip-free?
- Whose tea is packaged as a combination of infuser and stirrer in one, breaking the pattern of competitors?
Focus on Something Ignored
To be a disruptive marketer, you must understand the rules of your category and then, set out to break them. It is only through the unexpected and unconventional that you can stand out it a crowd. As Seth Godin says, can you be a purple cow standing out in a field of brown ones?
The trick is to break with tradition in a way that matters to your customers. Be disruptive to be part of your customer’s new story.
My advice – take something that everyone in the category does – and break it. Be like IKEA, a furniture store who doesn’t assemble the furniture you buy or deliver. Or be like Christian Louboutin who focuses on the color of the soul of shoes.
Read Different by Youngme Moon, a professor at Harvard whose insights into this topic are rich with insights and wisdom. This is one of the simplest and best written marketing books from the last 10 years.
Go ahead. Break a pattern.
Need help being disruptive with your marketing? Perhaps I can shed some light on a few new ideas to help jump start your process. Email me at jeffreylynnslater@gmail.com or text me at 919 270 0995. If you really want to be disruptive, write me a letter (in cursive).
Photo Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/trounos/4423737147/ Creative Commons Blaise T
